Miscellany

How to Fake Sincerity in Reporting Quarterly Results

Michael Giberson The Wall Street Journal reports on research analyzing quarterly reports (nearly 1/2 a million of them from over a 27-year period) which discovered strong circumstantial evidence that companies tweak their results to improve reported earnings.  The evidence? The number 4 occurs less frequently than chance would dictate in the tenths of a cent …

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Happy 201st for Charles Darwin (and Abe Lincoln)

Michael Giberson It’s the anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, which means it is Darwin Day! Darwin Day is a recently instituted celebration intended to commemorate the anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwinon February 12, 1809. The day is used to highlight Darwin’s contribution to science and to promote science in general. Some may believe that Darwin Day …

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On the Road Again…

Michael Giberson I’ll be away from my desk for a couple of days, so posting may be light. (Unless I can figure out the WordPress ap on my phone, in which case maybe I’ll live blog parts of the renewable energy conference I’ll be attending in Austin.)

Repugnance, Outrage, and Other Moral Excuses

Michael Giberson Bryan Caplan, in How Wise is Repugnance?,  questions Leon Kass’s argument that “repugnance is the emotional expression of deep wisdom.” (From Kass’s essay, “The Wisdom of Repugnance.”) Kass runs through a list of things that he thinks the reader will accept as obviously repugnant (incest, bestiality, mutilating corpses, cannibalism, and so on) and …

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New Sharing Button

Lynne Kiesling I’ve added an AddThis “share this blog” button to the right sidebar, which allows you to link to KP from just about every imaginable form of social media. We hope you will!